Customize the look
Writer Computer's look is set in Preferences: choose Writer → Preferences…, press ⌘, or run Settings from the command palette (⌘P). A setting you've changed shows a Reset button that puts it back.
Light and dark
Appearance → Schema picks system, light or dark. With system, the default, Writer follows your Mac's appearance and switches the moment macOS does.
To change it without opening Preferences, run Toggle Dark Mode from the command palette. It steps through system, light and dark.
Theme colors
The Light Theme and Dark Theme sections each have their own five settings, so the two can look quite different:
| Setting | What it changes | Light default | Dark default |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accent | The highlight color, used across the app and in diagrams | #FF6A00 |
#FF6A00 |
| Background | The window's background color | #FFFFFF |
#111111 |
| Foreground | The text color | #0D0D0D |
#FCFCFC |
| Translucent | How much of what's behind the window shows through, from 0 (solid) to 100 | 10 | 20 |
| Contrast | How strongly borders, cards and hover backgrounds stand out, from 0 to 100 | 20 | 16 |
Pick a color with the macOS color picker or type a hex value. Changes apply as you make them, and Mermaid diagrams recolor with the theme (Mermaid diagrams).
Fonts
Typography has three fonts, shared by both themes:
- UI font, for the app around your notes: sidebar, tabs, status bar. Default: SF Pro.
- Editor font, for the text of your notes. Default: SF Pro.
- Code font, for code blocks and inline code. Default: SF Mono.
Each lists the fonts installed on your Mac. A font you install while Writer is open appears in the list after you restart Writer.
Text size, width and spacing
In the Editor section:
| Setting | Range | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Font Size | any size, in pixels | 16 |
| Zoom | 50 to 300% | 100% |
| Line Height | any multiplier | 1.875 |
| Content Width | 480 to 1600 pixels | 734 |
Zoom scales the text of your notes on top of Font Size; the sidebar, tabs and status bar keep their size. ⌘= zooms in, ⌘- zooms out and ⌘0 goes back to 100%, stepping through 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, 125, 150, 175, 200, 250 and 300%. The command palette has Zoom In, Zoom Out and Reset Zoom too. Zoom applies to every window.
Content Width is the widest the column of text gets; on a narrower window it fits the window.
Sidebar and status bar
- Appearance → Sidebar File Label shows each note's title or its filename in the sidebar. See The sidebar for the rest of its settings.
- Status Bar turns the Words, Characters and Paragraphs counts on or off. You can also right-click the status bar to choose.